Tossing Bad Apples

Seems once a refugee applicant convinces a refugee board that he is a genuine refugee, and that board agrees that he is admissible to Canada as a refugee, almost nothing can budge that claimant from his perch in Canada, irrespective of his having been caught out as not having divulged required information that would have denied him that status. It's troublesome enough that Canada has experienced great difficulties in removing those claimants whose claims have been denied. They just seem to stick around, endlessly.

And why should they depart? After all, they're given opportunities to establish themselves in the country while awaiting their refugee-status hearings to determine whether or not they will ultimately be accepted as genuine refugees. They are given interim funding required to enable them to live within the country while awaiting their scheduled hearings. Their children may attend school at no cost to them, their medical-health care, welfare and housing are looked after through tax dollars.

Apart from genuine refugees whom Canada admits, as a responsible country aiding the less fortunate of the world, anticipating that the refugees will become a valued segment of Canadian society, there are notable instances when war criminals are admitted under the system, and when detected, legal machinery under the immigration and refugee act is oiled to rid the country of them. Yet they can take advantage of the legal system to insist on additional hearings, and string out the process interminably.

Then claim that they and their families have been established in the country for so long they've become an integral part of the population, and their human rights would be damaged by government action to remove them. Theirs then becomes a humanitarian plight and often church groups come to their defence. Often, but not always. Not, for example in the instance of Henry Jean-Claude Seyoboka of Gatineau, Quebec, formerly a member of the Rwandan army, during the genocide which saw 800,000 Tutsis slaughtered by the Hutus then in power.

This man has been ordered removed from Canada no fewer than six times. He has been deemed a war criminal, recognized as such after investigations by the RCMP War Crimes Unit, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and the Canada Border Services Agency. He was stripped of his refugee status in 2006 for complicity in crimes against humanity a year after his refugee status was granted. Yet our legal system permits him to appeal that ruling.

The seventh time he has done so. He has filed yet another judicial review request in Federal Court to have the IRB decision reappraised, insisting that his rights have been infringed. Cannot we assert ourselves properly to remove such human trash from this country?